I tried Googling “Rachel Lang” but didn’t come up with much beyond a reference to the fictional rage-filled telekenitic character from Carrie 2. This Rachel Lang seems a lot more goofy than angry, and certainly more entertaining than her fictional counterpart.

After the brief glitter shower, the protester was swiftly removed by security.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” the protester yelled as she was hauled off.

Meanwhile, Bachmann proceeded to work the ropeline, seemingly unfazed by the incident.

She was “unfazed” because Lang has an aim worse than her My Little Pony philosophy. None of the glitter ever touched her, according to people at the scene, and it’s uncertain whether Bachmann even noticed Lang.

Out in San Francisco, a Code Pink protester – you know, the fuschia folks who strangely lost interest in protesting against military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even Libya, once Barack Obama became commander-in-chief – threw a pink “glitter bomb” at Tim Pawlenty. Actually, they just dumped pink confetti on his book-signing table.

During the Bush years, no administration official or Pentagon official could finish a sentence of testimony on Capitol Hill without some aged activist whose physique strangely suggested a great deal of inactivism leaping out of her chair and screaming some incoherent chant as a tired Capitol Police officer dragged them away, oh so slowly. Oftentimes the Pinkers would come in bunches, apparently believing that President Bush would have no choice but to suddenly order all U.S. troops out of the war zone because his cabinet couldn’t finish a paragraph of prepared testimony.

As Jim writes, “Code Pink has dropped any pretense of being an issue-based organization; they simply find any old issue or stance of a disliked public figure and let fly their Improvised Glitter Devices.”

Presumably in the post-9/11 era and its fear of being attacked by powdery substances, a politician could have someone who tries a stunt like that arrested — or at a minimum, given a stern talking-to by men in sunglasses and black suits. But if you’re a politician on the right, do you fight back and draw attention to glitter goons in the media? You’ll likely generate bad press for yourself (though probably only among people who wouldn’t vote for you in the first place). Or do you just put up with this?

And on the flip-side, perhaps if the left turned to meditation and found the right spiritual guru, they would find the inner peace that allows them to move behind such childish stunts.